WeChat is a platform that allows the users to connect via mobile device. You can easily download it from the App Stores on Google Play Store for Android, BlackBerry and iTunes for Apple and others here. According to TechAsia We Chat have over 300 million users worldwide.

You can get registered by Tencent QQ, Facebook Connect and mobile phone VM/M. The app initially launched in Jan 2011 as Weixin by China, later on supported foreign languages by Oct 2011 and was re-launched by the name WeChat on April 2012. The gaming site Ibibio is promoting it in India in which Tencent holds a large stake.

WeChat is a free app but in April 2013 there were rumors that WeChat is going to charge fee now on. But after a poll showed more than 90% strong opposes this move had to be stopped and WeChat is back to being free for downloading and usage.

Tencent had announced on July 2013 that WeChat has crossed the 70 million milestones that also outside of China making Lionel Messi the newest product ambassador for WeChat.

Though some claim WeChat to be quite similar to WhatsApp, WeChat offers more features than WhatsApp. Here are just a few of them:

Video Call: WeChat allows face-to-face video calling by just having to press “+” and then select “Video Call” (icon) under your chat window.

Moments: Want to share your memorable moments with your friends on WeChat well, this feature will make it a piece of cake. The visibility settings can also be customized.

Voice chatting: This feature has always been loved. Allows you to turn your smartphone to a walkie-talkie. Just have to use the feature under your chat window by simply switching on the “send message” and holding the “hold to talk” button. On finishing the sentence let go the “hold to talk” tab and send your voice recorded message.

Web WeChat: This feature lets you chat with your friends between the PC and smartphone. You just have to click on the image wand icon that appears on the upper right side and select “Web WeChat” and begin your cross-platform chat.

Emoticons: A favorite feature because it is customizable. Apart from the large emoji collection WeChat also has ability to download from other sites or even from your own photo albums.

Group chats: Want your own group chat, do so by just selecting the “start chat” wand. Choose your friends you want in the group and begin chatting. You are allowed 40 members for one chat maximum.

Shake: You want to add more friends but do not know how? Just shake your phone and anyone who is shaking at that time will come to your contact. This feature is an interesting way to get new contacts including it definitely is a time killer too. Just never reveal any personal information to anyone; after all you never really know who’s on the other side so just play safe.

Look Around: You must have come around this text “I am new on WeChat and do not want to use the “shake” opt as I want just local pals”. Take a chill pill, just select “Look Around” (it’s just under the “Social” tab) see who it is and greet if you like them.

Drift Bottle: We all know just how cool Drift Bottle is; after all it allows us to meet complete strangers with a unique sense of mystery to it. Now just one fact, do you have the time to buy the bottle, write a message for a stranger, then seal it, go to the bayside and throw the bottle into the ocean and wait for a reply. Supposed that person also follows the drift bottle opt, then what? Well here is the drift bottle feature from WeChat, Just write your text message or throw your voice message in the “bottle” and throw it into the “sea” and eventually someone will pick your bottle and answer. Both sides remain anonymous till both want to make friendship.

Social Connect: This app is created by China and is a really cool app from Tencent with the vision for supporting the social international acclaimed giant “Facebook”. WeChat also integrates QQ (China’s biggest social network) even though they belong to the same company.

Photos: You can take and embellish them unique artistic captions and filters and also place them in personal journals and share with others. The user data is fully confidential with an on-demand backup of the contact list retrievable from and to the cloud.

The new version of WeChat was released on 5th July 2013 by Tencent. The version is 5.0 for iOS. The new version has some new features added:

Add nearby friends thanks to the new Hold Together function

Be able to download new anime stickers from the Sticker store at just 0.99$

Bind your debit and credit and your mobile pay-ups

Scan the street view, bar code, cover of a album or book and scan for any particular word

Play games with your WeChat friends in the Game Center, which is a preinstalled airplane war game

Public accounts can be divided in two categories: Official accounts for independence lists and Service for your chat lists

You can input with your voice

You can double-tab on the text to see full in full view

WeChat is definitely a boon in the texting and chatting field. With so many features it definitely is becoming the favorite of the users worldwide. This is growing day-by-day.

Viber is a cross-platform for instant-messaging and voice-over the internet type of protocol application designed for the smartphones specially designed by Viber Media. Apart from text messages you can also exchange audio, video and images. The client software is available for many devices that include BlackBerry OS, iOS, Mac OS, Symbian, Android, Windows Phone, Microsoft Windows and Series 40. For Linux the version is under development.

Viber initially was launched for iPhones strictly on 2nd Dec 2010 and went direct in competition with Skype. The pre-released version came on May 2011 for the Android but was only available for a limited 50,000 users. The unlimited version came around 19th July 2012. By May 8th 2012 Viber was available for both the Windows Phone and BlackBerry alike. As it rejected the 90 million user target on 24th July 2012 the group messaging service and the HD voice engine both were available for the iPhone and Android apps. On the same day versions for Symbian, Samsung’s Bada platform and for Nokia’s Series were announced.

Initially the voice call feature was available for the Android and Iphone apps only but a promise was made this feature would soon be available for the other devices. As limitation lies as the core of both Series 40 and BlackBerry OS as they do not easily support the VolP applications. Viber being Viber as promised on 22nd Sept 2012 the HD quality calls for phones including hold group-message sessions were available for Windows phone users with Nokia sets(due to the exclusive partnership with Nokia). Viber’s voice service was officially available for any Window phone 8 by 2nd April 2013.

Apart from allowing free calls, text, video messages, the ability to send photos to more than 200 million users worldwide by using 3G or Wi-Fi Viber also gives you the ability to avail many features. Some of the other facts include:

Allows your phone number to be your ID

As the app syncs with the mobile’s contact list enabling it to automatically detect the Viber contacts.

HD sound qualified free calls

Allows more than 40 participants n one group

Quick response to messages

Shares location

Make you messaging fun by sending emoticons and stickers

Get notifications so you never miss out any message or call (even if your Viber is off)

OS integrated-allows you to share videos and images direct from the Gallery

Some new features that were added are the new cool stickers, the ability to add captions to your video and photo messages, transfers live calls to your desktop and Android both with an online status indicator, Allows you to send video messages, The new improved voice engine is also worthy.

There are thousands of Spam attacks your blog has to face every day and the spam comments is one of the most serious problems that bloggers face. As a blogger you have to daily read comments, making sure they are not spam.

Here are Top-7 Anti-spam plugins that will not only save your time by using the blocking spam bots so you can comment on your blog.

1. Akismet – The undisputed Number 1 Anti Spam Plugin
AKismet Plugin is the most popular spam WordPress plugin. To be able to use AKismet, you first need to register yourself to get the API key. When any new comment comes to your blog, AKismet will automatically check the comment via its web service and determine whether it is spam or not. The suspected comments are marked as “spam”. The user can go through them later and can even bulk delete them.

2) Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin
This plugin adds a checkbox to your comments form and therefore making it sure that comments are submitted by legitimate humans and not spam bots.

3. Bad Behavior
With more than 500,000 downloads, Bad Behavior a PHP-based solution for blocking link spam has protected many blogs from the attack of spammers.

4. AVH First Defense against Spam
This plugin uses a different approach to attack spam. This plugin first checks the IPs of the visitor confirming if the IPs exist in the Local blacklist, stopforumspam.com database or the Project Honey Pot. This way the spam comment gets blocked even before it reaches your site.

5. Defensio Anti-Spam
If you want to protect your web application or blog from comment spam then Defensio is an ideal spam filtering web service. Use Defensio alone as the use of this plugin with other anti-spam plugins will only cause you problem. So before using this plugin, do make sure the other plugins are deactivated.

6. Anti Spam
If you want to stop comment spam, Anti-spam plugin is for you. It blocks spam in comments automatically and does not require captcha or moderation.

Every blogger loves to read comments on the content as it shows that they are regular visitors of the site and proper comments help improve the blog posts that they use. Comments are a very crucial part of blogging. The quantity of comments available on your blog signifies that your blog is popular amongst the masses.

There is a default comment form also available with the WordPress which visitors can use to post their comments. This type is the simple way of doing it but if you want to get a little enhancement in your form and at the same time increase the productivity of your comment form then these plugins will be helpful.

With these plugins you will change the way you do your comment form work. Today there are various comment plugins available, each having its own feature/s that will help the blogger in one way or another.

All of these plugins are free and can be downloaded to be used for your blog instantly.

If you want to build a comments platform that will help you build your active community within your website’s audience then this plugin will be useful. This plugin offers you lots of powerful tool and awesome features and most of all is very easy to install.

If you want to encourage your community in discovering new posts then use this plugin as this plugin rewards your readers by placing a link automatically into their last blog posted at the end of their comment.

This plugin is more of a friendly plugin as it automatically sends an email to your commenter’s by thanking them for their comment on your blog. This might look not much but when a reader looks at the thanks email, the impact is worth it and they will definitely come back to your blog.

This plugin is also free. This plugin sends the commenter’s a mail to follow up the comments after their comments then this plugin will be useful. This way if your commenter has any question, then they will come through the mail, if any one answers them back.

If you want to encourage conversation on your blog and enhance them then the IntenseDebate Comments is a useful plugin. You can boost the page views, build your readers community and increase your comments.

Hope you will use any one of these plugins and let us know how it helped you increase your blog connectivity with the audiences.